I Miss You
by Insanity 101
Summary: Her blood turned to ice as realization hit her in one blinding flash, Panic and Dread not far behind. Her mind went blank, her eyes stared unseeing, unbelieving, as he fell, slowly, painfully...


_Ok, some of those who reviewed the first version of "I Miss You" expressed a wish for more detail, as to Robin's death. Looking over it, I realized that it was horribly lacking in actual material, and was mostly composed of song lyrics. I liked the idea of this fic well enough to revisit it, so here it is, a revamped version of "I Miss You". Italics are flashbacks. Inspired by the song Slipped Away by Avril Lavigne, so please give it some thought.

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Raven looked up, startled, as she heard a small knock on her door.

"Please go away", she thought desperately, eyes tightly closed. "Please just go away"

"Raven?" said Beast Boy, begging to be answered. "Raven, I-" His timid, shaky voice faded into nothing. After a few minutes, he sighed quietly and shuffled away.

Raven thought she would be releived when he left, but now she found that it only added to the black, empty pit threatening to overwhelm her. Being alone was worse than a forced conversation.

She stared down at the thing in her hands, desperately fighting back the tears that had been pushing at her for a week now. It was a mask...his mask.

_"Raven, look out!"_

_She gasped as he collided with her, making her stumble to the side. Why did he...?_

_The whistle ofthe blade, a sharp intake of breath..._

_Her blood turned to ice as realization hit her in one blinding flash, Panic and Dread not far behind. Her mind went blank, her eyes stared unseeing, unbelieving, as he fell, slowly, painfully..._

"No!" she screamed, folding into herself. "He's not gone, he's not gone! Lies!"...but it was hopeless. A flood of images hit her with the force of a freight train.

She could still see his face, so bright, so clear...tears were stinging her cheeks, but she hardly noticed...eyes...she had waited so long to see those eyes: green, blue, and gray mixing into a perfect hazel...But his eyes were not how she had so often imagined...his eyes were blank, like the windows of an abandoned house.

_She watched as Slade stood over him, watched as he gave him one last kick in the ribs where the knife had been oh so recently lodged, watched as he mocked him, a hideous tone slinking through his words. "Your time is up, Robin. This was your last day." She watched as Slade disappeared in a cloud of black smoke, choking as soot filled the air...and still she could not move._

She had been too late. She had let him down. Tears were now streaming down her face, the barrier that had held them back through seven days of hell was gone. Her hand clenched around his mask: the last remnant of him. Raven slumped back on her bed, eyes staring blankly ahead as it continued to play out before her, like some hideous horror film that wouldn't shut off.

_Her body was amazingly still. Not a tear fell from her eye, not a sob escaped her lips as she dragged her legs forward, feeling as though a twenty-pound weight was tied to each ankle. Her eyes were wide, a silent terror reflected in deep purple orbs as she stared fixedly at the knife, potruding in a morbidly comical way from his once unmarred chest. She fell to her knees, then began to inch toward him, every movement costing her dearly, every breath renewing the searing pain in her chest...in her **heart**._

"It should have been me." The swirling patterns of plaster on her ceiling took on horrible shapes, a demon leering at her from one corner, a knife, oozing blood, visible in another. And ever present, burned into her subconscious mind, was that blank, empty, indifferent _mask_.

_The change wrought in him was terrible to behold. His body convulsed wildly, his breath coming in irregular gasps, every intake of air seeming to force more of his life-giving blood from the wound. With evident pain, he slowly lifted his arms, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of the dagger. With a quiet groan of unspeakable agony, he wrenched it from him, gasping as it tore through his flesh. His hands dropped limply to his sides, the dagger falling from fingers that could no longer clench to clatter on the cold, unforgiving stone._

_Her stomach heaved as blood poured from the wound, the temporary barrier of the blade suddenly removed. He was fading fast, his movements becoming weaker, less frequent...his breaths slowing to a rasping gasp... This was not happening...It was a dream, a nightmare. Any moment now she would wake to find him whole and happy, alive and well...It was not supposed to end this way._

_His hand flopped to the side, then began to inch towards her, resting every few seconds, but determined all the same. Hesitantly, she reached out and took it gently in her own. He was struggling, words that she could not understand rasping from his lips, now stained with a dark trickle of crimson. Without thought, without intention, she found her mind reaching out to his, the pain in her heart swelling as she felt how far he hard already slipped. His words were barely a whisper in the back of her mind...faint, weak, but insistant all the same. "Take it off." She did not understand, and somehow that fact made the pain all the more difficult to bare. "The mask...take it off, Raven. I want you to see...I want you to know..."_

_Uncertainty ruled for but a moment...then her hands, cold and unnaffected by her inner torment, found their way to his ghostly pale face, and slipped it off. A look of peace instantly washed over his features, banishing the horrible nothing for a moment as a tiny smile crept into his blood-stained lips. His body relaxed, the pain was gone from his face, and the hand, so determinedly clasped around hers, went limp, slipping through her fingers to fall on the cold of concrete. And with that tiny movement, soundless and seemingly insignificant, Robin began to fade away...a glimpse of that emotion, that strange "oneness", a whisper of his smile, a gentle laugh...bit by bit, he departed, prying himself gently from her grasp as though to ease the pain of parting...and, in the end, there was nothing but a name._

Raven knew that, ever so slowly, her friends would forget him; his name would become more and more rare; his face would begin to fade away; the sound of his voice would whisper just beyond the reaches of memory. The world would move on without him...but would she?

Raven closed her eyes, whispering in a voice racked with pain.

"I miss you."

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_Ok, hope you enjoyed that...I just didn't want to leave this idea half-complete; I was hoping to convey with sharper images and a better understanding of events Raven's true emotions through the past week. Much of the bitter sting of his death lies in the fact that their feelings were never resolved...I try to avoid the "I'm dying so now I should probably let you know that I love you" routine...there just wasn't time...but though I know he did have feelings for her, Raven can never be certain. The thought of what could have been and the pain of what might not have been will forever haunt her._


End file.
